Meat Loaf: 'Being overweight has taken its toll on my body'

Meat Loaf believes his back problems stem from "weighing 300lbs most of my life".

The 69-year-old singer, real name Michael Aday, had surgery on his spine last month (Oct16), and has had to take things easy ever since. During an interview on British television show This Morning on Friday (04Nov16), the noticeably slimmer singer opened up about the reasons for the operation, and admitted that his famously active stage routines probably contributed to his issues.

"About four weeks ago I had spinal fusion surgery which we didn’t know I was going to have to have," he explained. "We knew I had a nerve problem but it wasn’t until the doctors got in there that they saw they had to put some screws and nuts in there.

"It’s probably because I weighed 300lbs most of my life. I weigh 225lbs today. I was up to 340lbs at one point. When you weigh that much, when you have that much weight on your knees and your back, I think that takes (a toll). I don’t think running around the stage, doing what I was doing, rolls and jumps, I don’t think that helped a lot but that wasn’t the reason."

After Meat's surgery admission earlier this week the media linked it to his stage collapse in Edmonton, Canada, back in June (16). However, the Bat Out of Hell star insists the two have nothing to do with one another.

"They’re not connected at all," he said. "I had had the flu two shows before we did the Edmonton show. And my wife is from Edmonton, and she came up to Edmonton and she bought her whole family, and she goes, ‘If you don’t go on in Edmonton I’m gonna kill you’. And so I went on.

"We were into the encore - we had one more encore to go. All of a sudden I started feeling dizzy and I said, ‘I don’t want to fall’, because if I fainted I would fall forward, that wouldn’t be good. So I’m just going to sit down, and I’ll finish the song sitting down. And as I was going down I just went out."

After being in the hospital for 10 hours and undergoing numerous tests, doctors told the rock star that his collapse was down to dehydration.

To celebrate the Box Office opening to the general public, there was a special live performance by the cast on Thursday 3 November outside the London Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane. Theatre-News.com was there to see the Harleys, the songs and interview the stars.

Click above for the exclusive Theatre-News.com interview with the lovely Meat Loaf and lead star Andew Polec and below to get a taster of what awaits when the musical arrives at the London Coliseum.





Theatre-News.com and sister site Music-News.com also caught up with Meat Loaf and Andrew Polec at the Q Awards on November 2nd for a red carpet chat.